Effect of ion beam nitriding on diamond nucleation and growth onto steel substrates

Ion beam nitriding was successfully employed to overcome the difficulty of diamond growth on ferrous babe substrates. Commercial steels were pretreate d by an ion beam method in an ambient environment of nitrogen gas, diamond was then deposited by hot filament chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The dep osited films were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diff raction and Raman spectroscopy. Continuous diamond films with a sharp chara cteristic Raman peak of 1337.7 cm(-1) were grown and adhered well on the ni trided region of the steel substrates. On the other hand, a mixture of diam ond crystallites, amorphous carbon and graphitic carbon was loosely deposit ed on the unnitrided region. A thin layer of iron and chromium nitrides, fo rmed on the steel surface by ion beam nitriding, enabled the subsequent nuc leation and growth of high-quality CVD diamond. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B .V. All rights reserved.